


jupiter now | johnny.

by reddawns



Category: Kpop - Fandom, NCT (Band)
Genre: AU, Art, Bisexual, College AU, F/F, F/M, Fanfic, JOHNNY SUH - Freeform, LGBT, Love, Love Triangle, NCT U, Romance, SM Entertainment - Freeform, United States, frat boys, kpop, nct - Freeform, nct 127, nct 127 johnny, nct college au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 08:31:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19103482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reddawns/pseuds/reddawns
Summary: She's living in the moment.[Coming soon.]





	jupiter now | johnny.

“What’s your date of birth?” he asked, eyes trained on the see-through neon clipboard. I gave him a look to remind him that it was today, and he should have even known what year because I told him I was turning twenty; he blushed, chuckling at his own ignorance. His little mistake didn’t bother me at all. I was just glad to have Johnny there at all, helping me fill out my hospital paperwork because my wrist was swelling at light speed and I was still a tad dizzy from the fall. Or maybe it was white coat syndrome that I was suffering from, but what did it matter now that I was about to receive treatment?

“Full name?” he finally asked as he gave the forms a once-over. It dawned on me that he only knew me as Alex and probably wrote that down habitually.

“Just put Alex Drake,” I told him, squeezing my wrist to see what it’d feel like and immediately regretting it. I had done that three times now and would probably continue torturing myself. That white coat syndrome took a lot out of my brain power.

“Yeah, but what’s Alex short for?” he reiterated. “I have a feeling the hospital’s gonna need more than _Alex_.”

“I don’t see why it matters,” I said, quick to defend my name. He raised his brows and shook his head at my hypersensitivity.

“Jeez.”

I felt flames kindle in my cheeks the longer we sat in silence. I realized a second too late that if anyone were to know my real name, I would want it to be Johnny. He had been super accepting of me up to this point, and his lippy reaction just now was only because I overreacted.

“Uh, my real name is Jupiter,” I confessed at last, my eyes falling down to the floor. There was a squashed potato chip next to my dirt-covered sneaker. “Jupiter Alexandria Drake.”

Johnny’s eyes maximized as soon as I said it, and he scribbled away. After he put the pen down, he asked me, “Why would you keep that from me? It’s awesome. It’s beautiful!”

“Thanks,” I murmured. “Well, my late grandfather was an astronomer and he preached everything NASA-related, so my mom wanted to carry out his legacy through me. Sucks for them that I’m an art major.”

“You’re kidding,” Johnny grinned. “Wow, I never knew that about you. I never even saw that coming.”

“There’s more,” I said. “My grandfather’s wife, Helen, is still alive, and she’s the one who tormented me into going by my middle name. She had been planning and planning and _planning_ to divorce the poor guy for years, and she hated my mom. So when my mom had me, she named me Jupiter, and Helen went ballistic—she really thought Jupiter was the worst name that could ever be thought of! Her anger was unmatched. She told everyone, ‘Let’s just call her Alexandria so she doesn’t get bullied.’”

“She’s so wrong!”

I nodded along, “Thank you! I wanted to argue with her so badly as I got older but I had no one to stand behind me, so I just gave in and followed my orders to go by Alexandria. It developed into ‘Alex’ after I realized Alexandria wasn’t as popular as Alexandra…. You know, Helen was never invited to the funeral.”

“For your grandfather?” Johnny asked me for clarification. I looked him the eyes.

“For my mom,” I told him and then watched his entire face soften.

I glanced down at my lap, uncomfortable because it wasn’t like I knew what having two parents was like in the first place. Even though I was on my mom’s side of the whole Helen dispute, I felt nothing but nostalgia whenever she came up. That was why I usually refrained from telling people that my birth mom had passed away. The sympathy was harder to digest than the fact that I lost both of my biological parents.

I bet Johnny was concerned as to why I told him my emergency contact was my mother, but my mother in _his_ case was my aunt Allison; my mother in _my_ case had passed away during childbirth, and my dad dropped me off at Aunt Ali’s Pennsylvanian apartment before enlisting in the army and never returning home.

I summed up the rest of my story for Johnny in what little time we had until the nurse would call me back for an examination. There I found out I’d just sprained my wrist and I was not supposed to put any weight on it for a couple of days. The doctor gave me some over-the-counter painkiller recommendations, fitted a brace for me, and sent Johnny and me on our merry way.  
  
Judging by his silent, shocked nature of today, I predicted that Johnny wanted to talk about my parents more, and I was right. But I didn’t want to bring him down. I wanted to live in the present so that I didn’t have to be Jupiter _then_ , who was a sad, anxious little girl. I just wanted to be Jupiter _now_.


End file.
